OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 289 



obtained a much wider acceptance of utilitarian doctrines, and a more 

 intelligent recognition of their real import, than previous thinkers of 

 his school had secured. He redeemed the word " utility " from the ill 

 repute into which it had fallen, and connected noble conceptions and 

 motives with its philosophical meaning. It is now no longer a synonyme 

 of the ignoble or base, or the name of that quality in conduct, or in any 

 thing which conduces to the satisfaction of desires common to all men. 

 He made it mean clearly the quality in human customs and rules of 

 conduct which conduces to realize conditions and dispositions which for 

 men (though not for swine) are practicable, and are the most desirable ; 

 their desirableness being tested by the actual preference which those 

 who possess them have for them as elements in their own happiness. 

 This meaning of utility includes the highest motives in whose satisfac- 

 tion an individual's happiness can consist, and not the baser ones alone ; 

 not even the base ones at all, so far as they obstruct the sources of a 

 greater happiness than they can afford. It is now no longer a paradox 

 to the intelligent student of Mill's philosophy, that he should prefer, as 

 he has avowed, the worst evil which could be inflicted on him against 

 his wall, to the pains of a voluntary sophistication of his intellect in 

 respect to the more serious concerns of life. 



His method led him to conceal or at least subordinate to his 

 single purpose most of what was original in his discussions of the 

 various philosophical subjects to which he gave his attention. Yet 

 his studies in logic, ethics, psychology, political economy and politics, 

 and even in poetry, are full of valuable and fertile contributions of 

 original thought ; and of that kind of service to philosophy which he 

 most valued in such writers as Dr. Brown and Archbishop Whately, — 

 a kind of service which he believed would survive the works of more 

 learned and ambitious thinkers. A thorough preparation for his 

 work, to which his education was directed by his father, realized 

 what is rare in "modern times, — a complete command of the art of 

 dialectics ; an art which he believed to be of the greatest service in the 

 honest pursuit of truth, though liable to abuse at the hand of the dis- 

 honest advocate. His education was like that of an ancient Greek 

 philosopher, — by personal intercourse with other superior thinkers. 

 He felt keenly in his later work, as Plato had, " how much more is 

 to be learned by discussing with a man who can question and answer, 

 than with a book which cannot." That he was not educated at a 

 university, and through the influences of equals and coevals in intel- 

 lectual and moral development, may account for one serious defect in his 



powers of observation, — a lack of sensibility to the differences of char- 

 voL. I. 37 



